Natural navigation in VR is challenging due to spatial limitations. While Teleportation enables navigation within very small physical spaces and without causing motion sickness symptoms, it may reduce the feeling of presence and spacial awareness. Redirected walking (RDW), in contrast, allows users to naturally walk while staying inside a finite, but still very large, physical space. We present Telewalk, a novel locomotion approach that combines curvature and translation gains known from RDW research in a perceivable way. This combination enables Telewalk to be applied even within a physical space of 3m x 3m. Utilizing the head rotation as input device enables directional changes without any physical turns to keep the user always on an optimal circular path inside the real world while freely walking inside the virtual one. In a user study we found that even though motion sickness susceptible participants reported respective symptoms, Telewalk did result in stronger feelings of presence and immersion and was seen as more natural then Teleportation.

Redirected walking (RDW) allows virtual reality (VR) users to walk infinitely while staying inside a finite physical space through subtle shifts (gains) of the scene to redirect them back inside the volume. All prior approaches measure the feasibility of RDW techniques based on if the user perceives the manipulation, leading to rather small applicable gains. However, we treat RDW as an interaction technique and therefore use visually perceivable gains instead of using the perception of manipulation. We revisited prior experiments with focus on applied gains and additionally tested higher gains on the basis of applicability in a user study. We found that users accept curvature gains up to 20°/m, which reduces the necessary physical volume down to approximately 6x6m for virtually walking infinitely straight ahead. Our findings strife to rethink the usage of redirection from being unperceived to being applicable and natural.